Wildlife Encounters: Speckled King Snake

I was a bit late in getting the perfect shot of this speckled king snake. We were driving down a narrow dirt road through private property, returning from the Preserve when I noticed a bit late that the stick laying across the edge of the road was in fact a speckled king snake. A quick check in the side mirror after we’d passed it showed it moving but I wasn’t sure if it was because we’d just ran over it.

We hopped out and found that it was just fine and had coiled up as we passed by. I ran back to the truck to pull the camera out of my pack and just as I turned it on the snake started slithering off. This was the only photo I got.

A few days ago we saw another crossing Pine Island Bayou, swimming like it was no big deal. Occasionally we’ll see others swimming, cottonmouths, garters, a rough green one day.

Yesterday I’d been digging around in a plot, looking for vegetation I’d missed, when I noticed something moving. For some reason I thought it was a big leech, then it moved faster and I couldn’t spit the name of the new girl out fast enough to tell her to move. It ended up being a juvenile cottonmouth.

Today an unidentified snake slithered through our plot rather fast, too fast for us to even i.d. So, with that snake, the speckled king snake and later a small garter on the same road, we saw three.

The snakes are out.